Conventional planning software applications are used in a wide variety of industries to accomplish various planning purposes. These planning software applications generally utilize a model of the user's environment for which planning is desired. In the manufacturing context, personnel could use planning software to develop solutions to problems and to react and compete intelligently in a given market. Planning software is needed that can be programmed by users to answer the questions that need to be answered in a format useful to the user.
The productivity impact of manufacturing planning software may be limited by the capabilities of the software, itself. Conventional planning software can be incapable of generating needed reports, performing needed analysis, allowing the needed modifications to a model, or modeling the problem needed to be solved. Consequently, users have limited options because many helpful planning tasks cannot reasonably be done manually and planning software is unable to do them automatically.
One fundamental need of manufacturing personnel, for example, is to generate custom reports that display desired information in formats, terms, and units that are used in daily manufacturing operations. Users of planning software should not be required to manually search a large quantity of data to find desired information and complete a desired analysis. Users also should not be required to convert data mentally from one set of units into units used on the factory floor. All searching, sorting, filtering, converting and translation is work that it is advantageous for planning software applications to handle.
The programming mechanism that is most widely used by non-programming professionals is the conventional spreadsheet, such as LOTUS 1-2-3 and MICROSOFT EXCEL. Often planners, purchasers, sales professionals and others, faced with inadequate planning software applications, develop sophisticated analyses and reports using conventional spreadsheet tools.
Contrary to conventional planning software applications, it is advantageous that a planning software application be directly programmable by the personnel that need planning tools. It is problematic for a user to be required to turn to a local system maintainer or programmer or the software vendor to initiate a new analysis or to make minor adjustments. It is also problematic if a user is unable to experiment with different options and possibilities in order to develop an analysis of and interface with the modeled environment whether manufacturing, distribution, supply or other planning environment. It also is advantageous that a user be enabled to accomplish planning analysis through direct interaction with a reporting system.